Interpol's Stolen Works of Art Database

INTERPOL is managing a global database on stolen works of art, which includes over 41, 000 items (status June 2013) reported by 125 member countries. In August 2009, a public online access has been created enabling the consultation of this database. In 2012, under the lead of the Italian Carabinieri specialist unit for the protection of cultural heritage and with financial support of the European Commission, a project codenamed PSYCHE (Protection SYstem for Cultural Heritage) has been launched aiming at the modernization of INTERPOL’s works of art database. This project will enable member countries to directly insert data into INTERPOL’s database, it will allow the direct data transfer from the national Italian database LEONARDO and simplify and speed up searches using an image comparison software. As a result, it will increase both the amount and the quality of data on stolen works of art made available through INTERPOL.